There is an interesting problem at the heart of the row between ITV News and the Ministry of Defence. The row arose because the MoD granted ITV News access to see the treatment of wounded service personnel. Rather than giving this an unqualified hoorah, ITV produced some reporting that the MoD’s head of news, James Clark, judged “As bad a hatchet-job as I’ve seen in years. Cheap shots all over the place, no context, no reasonable explanation.” In an email to ITV News, he asked “Why on earth would we spend time, resources and valuable places wanted by Sky, the BBC and others to facilitate journalism like this?”
If the MoD has a problem with the accuracy and fairness of the report, it’s a matter for Ofcom. The MoD have complained about soldiers’ privacy being invaded. If invasion of privacy comes up, it’s a matter for individuals.
Now the MoD might have quietly decided to put ITV News at the back of the ‘embed’ queue without letting anyone know why. But, they were open about expressing their views — which at least has the virtue of being frank.
And that’s the interesting problem. How do we manage limited resources, like ‘embeds’, in a democracy? Because we’re not very democratic about access. Access is actually a powerful form of patronage, and perhaps it needs to be handled independently of the people on the receiving end.
If seeing what British forces are up to, on our tax spend, is also a matter of accountability and transparency, rather than a matter of good PR, then it is a broader concern for all of us. And the issue of negotated access extends far, far wider than the MoD, to the very heart of government communications.
By denying ITV News embeds the MoD will struggle to get the kind of reporting provided by ITN’s Bill Neely, one of the finest correspondents around, and Eugene Campbell, one of the best news cameramen. The pair did an embed with British forces in Afghanistan back in September.
There is another picture that comes out of a conflict like the one in Afghanistan. It appears in medal citations and leaked emails. Platoon houses under constant fire. Co-ordination problems between ground troops and air support. And then there’s the other side. Is every dead body a Taliban fighter? Journalists like asking questions, making life more difficult for them may only make life more difficult for the MoD’s media relations teams. But that might not be a bad thing.
Adrian,
I just discovered your weblog via technorati.com, as I was searching for additional information on the ITV News reports that led the MoD to pull ITV’s access to embed reporters.
As a U.S. citizen — albeit one with the right to dual U.S./British citizenship — I can only wish that our media was quite as informative and straightforward about the situation in Iraq / Afghanistan.
It frustrates me that people are online right now, both in your country and in mine, castigating ITV over supposed wrongdoings, without having any access to see any of the reports that led to the MoD decision.
Hopefully, someone will post them to the internet, so that the vast majority of people who didn’t see the reports will have some informed basis to judge whether the MoD had any basis for their actions.
I do want to take a moment and say that your blog is quite a find. I imagine you’re quite a busy person, but I hope you stick with it. Please bear with me throughout the next day or so, as I’m sure I’ll feel compelled to comment on several other of your informative posts.
Just out of fairness — and because you can probably expect to see additional comments from me over the foreseeable future — my name is Mark Kraft, an independent weblogger.
In the U.S., I am probably best known for my role in helping in the creation of the weblogging community LiveJournal.com, or for my weblog and my reporting on Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, relying on many members of LiveJournal who stayed behind in the city as my sources inside New Orleans during and after the hurricane.
In Britain, however, I am probably best known for breaking the story about the offensive use of white phosphorus in Fallujah. (The British press covered that story to a far greater extent than that of the U.S. press. Is it any wonder that most of my news comes from outside my own country?)
In any case, welcome. I have created a LiveJournal syndicated feed for your weblog at http://syndicated.livejournal.com/adrian_monck , which should make it easier for others on LiveJournal to read and regularly access your weblog, and plan on recommending your weblog to others, esp. to my friends in journalism, so hopefully there will be a good deal more discussion in your weblog soon.
Best,
Mark
Thanks Mark — that’s very kind of you. Hat’s off over the WP story. I hope someone at ITV News does post them up, although often you don’t see the way ‘access’ is used.
Oddly enough I sympathise with the MoD, but I think they’re in an invidious position — media access has become highly politicised, but the methods of controlling it aren’t subject to the kinds of checks and balances democracies like to ascribe to other forms of political patronage.
On one level they’re only doing what our elected politicians are telling them to do, on another it looks arbitrary and spiteful.
“Oddly enough I sympathise with the MoD… On one level they’re only doing what our elected politicians are telling them to do, on another it looks arbitrary and spiteful.”
That leads me to wonder just how this decision came about. The article describes James Clark, the MoD’s Director of News, as making the decision. Am I right to assume that he is basically a political appointee, or was recommended to the post from someone inside government? If so, it makes it much harder for me to be too sympathetic.
Although I didn’t see it on their website yesterday, or see any mention of the ITV/MoD story, ITV now has a website for their report. It’s compelling coverage. That said, I do not see anything to support their claims that wounded soldiers arriving in Britain could somehow be identified. I also saw no signs of any soldier being used / misquoted, etc.
What I think is more of an issue to the MoD is that they have essentially followed government orders by trying to block all access to pictures of planes returning with war wounded, and ITV basically found a way to do it anyway.
The MoD’s defense: claim that such public filming constitutes an unauthorized “invasion of privacy”, with no advanced approval being given by the soldier filmed. All this over a few seconds of footage where you clearly couldn’t identify the soldier in question, even if you wanted to do so.
The one complaint which may be relevant is that they showed recuperating soldiers at Hedley Court, some of whom may not have been aware that they were being filmed. But that said, the access given was presumably given because the MoD *wanted* to showcase their intensive, high-quality treatment in rehabilitation wards… but is that really a matter of dispute? Even the reporter said “this place has expertise and equipment second-to-none, and it’s all needed.”
Ultimately, I think the problem that the MoD had with this series of reports is that they showed more of the truth than the MoD cared for, and used access which they thought would lead to a straightforward positive story in order to frame a more critical, investigative report.